I'm a traveler who is heavily dependent on maps, especially street maps or my friend on the road - maps.me. For someone who has forgotten her age, names of people, or the current month, you can just imagine that sometimes I forget where I am. Yes, I get lost most of the time that I was nicknamed Dory by some friends I met during my trip.

They knew I was probably finding my way back when I was late coming back to the hostel. I told them that I made it to this part of the world on my own and that it was kind of annoying when they were checking on me. These guys just expressed their disbelief to my craziness when one night, I got really lost and had a scary argument with a Colombian police. Surprisingly, the only things I don't forget and that could save me are my languages, so I could speak three fluently. And I'm still trying to learn more, in case I forget my cellphone, or get lost again somewhere in this world.

You are probably used to the good old Mercator Map here, with all those countries you look up to there. Enlarged sizes of Europe and North America, with Russia and Canada seem to appear taking up most of the Earth's landmass. And ignoring the reality of the vast Pacific ocean and other irrelevant countries in it. Don't forget to ignore my dream place Antarctica as well.

Blame it to the great Flemish geographer and cartographer Gerardus Mercator who put this massive spheroid on a 2D surface. It's tricky because the world is a sphere and a map is flat, creating visual distortions.

Take note, it is just the map that is flat.

Thanks to him, it makes it more convenient for us to look at the map, a slight cure to ignorance, for those who do not have enough geography knowledge.

I'm not a Cartography geek of some sort, I actually had forgotten my school days of studying the different map projections. By the way, Cartography is the science or practice of drawing maps.

A common question I get when I was traveling,

Where is your country located?
Here, look at the map!

Now, what if Mercator map is wrong? There's a map called Authagraph which claims to be the most accurate map you have ever seen. Be forewarned though, you might not like what you see.

Japanese Architect Hajime Narukawa created this new map for several years to correct the distortions, now Japan is at the center of the world. I guess every map seems to have some bias.

I just couldn't accept what happened to Brazil here, China is shrunk and Africa is now bigger. And Antarctica is now part of the world map, and there's more blue around. Looking at this map is totally uncomfortable for us who have been looking at Mercator map all our lives. The Mercator map just focused on the land masses, distorted and enlarged the powerful nations. I guess it's just easier for us to ignore the reality of things for convenience.

In my opinion, if this is really the most accurate map, then I would not have a problem to reorient myself and remove this lifetime bias of looking at Mercator map. I would prefer to get used to the reality.

Does it make sense to you?

How's your country on the new map?

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